the beginning of the beginning

A new chapter in one area of life should elicit new beginnings elsewhere. That’s fancy talk for “I’m graduating, hence this blog.”

In two months (almost to the day ) I’ll be walking down the quad in a graduation cap and gown at cozy little SUNY New Paltz, a liberal arts college in the Catskills. I’ll be graduating with a bachelor’s in journalism with a minor in women’s studies. And I’ll probably be more scared than excited, a result of graduating in an economy that’s literally passing out and wheezing at people’s feet, with a degree in a field that’s similarly puffing out of steam.

So in order to offset that, here I am. My little brother (even though he’s not so little at 6 foot 2 and 20 years old) told me recently that if I want to make it as a writer, I need to have a blog. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed just plain dumb and irresponsible not to. Everyone and their mother (except mine) has a blog, and I frequent feminist blogs as regularly as the New York Times.

Right now, I’m working full time as an intern at the Legislative Gazette, the paper that covers New York state government. I ended up here after putting studying abroad ahead of snagging an internship necessary to fulfill my degree and because I was offered a scholarship that paid a full semester’s tuition. I couldn’t say no.

That doesn’t mean I was looking forward to it. Public policy, government reporting, statistics…it all seemed so dry and foreign to me. My focus in previous semesters had been on literary journalism or creative nonfiction pieces. I wrote about my family, my friends, my girlfriend. People I saw on the street. It was detail oriented, and extremely subjective. Government reporting, I thought, would not be. And so I packed up my life (for the sixth time since starting college) and trudged up to Albany in the long, dark days of early January to begin a 6 month hell.

For the first month and half, I bitched and I moaned. I whined. I complained. I hated Albany, and I hated the writing style. Hard news leads, official quotes, objectivity, objectivity, objectivity. Every other weekend saw me in New Paltz, pretending I was a “regular” college senior enjoying her last semester. Sunday nights, for the first time since 12 th grade, became the bain of my existence and the source of waves of anxiety.

But Monday mornings saw me in the office, putting my best writer’s foot forward despite my bad attitude, and it wasn’t long before I developed a beat: reproductive health and same-sex rights. My editor handed me a press release about LGBTQ groups praising a newly-elected official who was down with gay rights, and after writing it and finding it interesting, I asked him to lay more of those types of articles on me.

Now, three months in, I’ve written on the 36th anniversary of Roe. V. Wade, where I interviewed Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who won the legendary court case; several events held by Family Planning Advocates of New York, where I got to interview Shelby Knox, a 22 year-old activist and as far as the third wave of feminism goes, pretty famous feminist; marriage equality rallies, same-sex immigration sponsorship, female genital mutilation, etc.

While if asked, I think I’ll always refer to government reporting as dry and sometimes boring (I spent two full days research the state department of transportation’s snow budget once), my eyes have been opened to just how important public policy is for feminist issues. In my women’s studies classes, the liberal vs radical activist argument used to come up a lot; while the liberals see it as necessity to work towards effecting public policy change, the radicals view that as falling prey to a system that will always subject women and other minorities. I used to go back and forth—both sides of the argument have their valid points. But after working at the Gazette and writing on the public policy work organizations like FPA, the Empire State Pride Agenda, LAMBDA Legal, Marriage Equality New York and Planned Parenthood do, I guess I have to self-identify as a liberal. When it comes down to it, government ultimately does affect our day to day lives, even if we like to think otherwise, and it’s vital we work to fix the system to include the rights of people who can’t always speak for themselves. I like to look at liberal feminism not as becoming a pawn of the system, but infiltrating it, shaking it up, changing it.

Basically, I’ve been working to turn this experience at the Gazette into a springboard for a career where I can employ the insight I’ve gained into government workings, where I can live and breathe feminism and where I can write. I need to be writing, always. It gives me a unique sense of self worth that I can’t really get from anywhere else. And if I can make change doing it, that’s an added bonus.

SO. Now that I’ve very wordily explained how it is I came to be writing here, a little bit needs to be said about my hopes for this blog.

It’s going to be a collaborative effort between myself and my good buddy Tracy, a fellow New Paltz grad of the journalism department. Tracy upped the ante and graduated a semester early with not only a minor in women’s studies but in black studies as well. We met through the study abroad program when we both went to Melbourne, Australia our junior year, and fell instantly in friend-love.

I’m speaking for myself here, but in this blog, we want to bring you all the feminews that’s fit to print. And since we all know the personal is political, this will not only encompass news that’s occurring in the state Capitol or in Queens, but stuff that’s happening to us as well. It will chronicle the experience of two young aspiring feminist writers in a pretty rough time to be looking for a job. It will speak to Tracy’s experience living in Queens with her family after graduation, and my experience of (probably) moving back home to live with my now and then conservative parents on Long Island after having lived four glorious years of freedom during which I first fell in lady-love. It will give you a little insight into the world of two young ladies who, like it or not, can get a little raunchy and inappropriate every now and then. You’ll meet our friends, other writers and artists we like and be introduced to people WE don’t even know but that have surfaced somewhere on the intawebz and are doing cool stuff.

Hopefully, it’ll be funny. But don’t judge my humor on this first post—it’s almost 3:30 on a workday. (Translation: I am burnt out on writing right now.)